In article ,
(Tom Merkle) wrote:

Chris Jones wrote in message
...

If Nozomi doesn't hit Mars, I don't forsee the Chicken Littles
succeeding in preventing a Mars sample return mission. Even if it does
hit Mars, the C.L.'s chance of success is, I think, not terribly great
-- I expect the space science community would be able to rally more
support that the C.L.s. IMHO, of course.

Sure, except some of the Chicken Littles are right where they can do
the most damage--at NASA. I think it's likely that NASA's own
misguided efforts to make a sample return utterly "failsafe" will
price the mission cost right out of range. That's likelier than the
quasi-scientific media C.L.s preventing NASA from launching what it
wants to launch (since they already failed to prevent Cassini or
Galileo).

Poor old NASA! It can't seem to satisfy anybody.

When it ignores the warnings of the "Chicken Littles" about spacecraft
safety it gets damned for allowing Columbia to burn and crash. When it
tries to pay those warnings due heed it gets damned again for being
*too* safety conscious! :-)

--
Stephen Souter

http://www.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/